Increased production is a key component to increasing a supply of transportation fuels, increasing chemical applications, food applications, feed applications, and the like that are derived from renewable plant resources. Typically, a dry grind process or a wet mill process may use corn as feedstock for producing alcohol, ethanol, butanol, and the like in a production facility. The dry and wet processes differ in complexities, which affect capital costs, preparation of feedstock, types of co-products produced, and different types of primary products produced.
The dry grind process offers several advantages over the wet mill process. For instance, the dry grind process provides lower capital costs and lower operating costs. However, the dry grind process only produces alcohol, distillers' grain, carbon dioxide, and oil.
Wet mills are able to separate grain so components may be efficiently recovered and purified. Wet mills produce more high-valued products, such as food products, alcohol, gluten meal, gluten feed, starch, oil, and syrup. However, wet mills cost substantially more to build and have higher operating costs than dry grind mills. Wet mills are also typically much larger in size than dry grind mills.
There have been attempts to use the dry grind process or the wet mill process with other types of grain (i.e., not corn) as feedstock to produce alcohol. However, these processes may require significant modifications to the existing production facilities due to the abrasive nature of hull from some grains, varying carbohydrate concentration, micronutrients, and high viscosity of certain grain mashes.
Accordingly, there is a need for converting other types of grain as feedstock for various applications in a more cost-efficient manner. Accordingly, there is also a need for separating solids in a cost efficient manner, recovering and purifying components, without significantly affecting quality of the product or co-products, and improving oil recovery and yield.